This SF based artist is showing right now at Park Life and is working on a solo show for Motel gallery in Portland. She also has a thing for group hugs.

Fresh off her recent show at Park Life in San Francisco, Michelle Blade has been having a pretty good time. A number of articles have been written about her work, she is in the midst of planning some great new projects and to top it all off, the weather in the Bay Area has been beautiful. Her recent work, which features a mix of acrylics, is both colorful and alive in a way that you don't see in a lot of the contemporary pieces talked about these days. It's actually quite refreshing and easy to get consumed in one of her paintings and then find yourself having to snap back to reality a second later.
Since it's nearly summertime and one of her new projects in called 100 Days of Summer, we asked Michelle a few questions about nice weather and group hugs.

What do you do and where do you do it?

I make paintings and other art things, mostly in my studio or at home.

What's your favorite place to eat in the city?

Mandalay on California or Vietnamese sandwiches at Pho Clement

Also, since you are originally from Southern California, maybe you can help answer my recent hotly debated topic: Who do you think has better Mexican food.. Los Angeles or San Francisco? Is there a difference?

I feel like I've been seriously discussing this lately too...what some of my friends and I have decided is that Southern California burritos are usually really wet, with lots of sauce, and the northern Californian burritos are drier. Personally, I like lots of sauce, but that's just a matter of taste. I do know the salsa up here is really good.

Now that it's almost summertime in the Bay Area, do you have any big plans for the summer? Can you talk a little bit about your 100 Days of Summer project?

I started The 100 Days of Summer as a way of staying creative everyday, or at least for 100 days straight. Between May 31st and Friday September 7th, I'll make daily posts on my website of projects I start and finish in the course of a day. My paintings sometimes take a long time to finish so this is my way of having other creative outlets. Other than that I just want to spend time in the sun, go camping with friends, and enjoy the city.

A lot of your pieces strike me as slightly religious or biblical. Is that a conscious attempt or is that just a by-product of the subject matter?

Well, I don't know if they are really religious in the biblical sense. The body of work I've been focusing on lately is more about questioning and understanding humanity, and what drives us to form relationships with one another, build societies and then break ties to try and create something better and stronger... A kind of quest for an utopist lifestyle that can never exist. Searching for perfection is such a cyclical process of failures and successes; I'm really enchanted with it all.

In looking back to your earlier work, it seems as though you have been trying out new and different styles over the last couple of years. Have you found your niche or are you constantly alternating your technique?

I think I've found a rhythm of working recently that is feeling really good. In the past I'd been working a bit more sporadically, with no direct goals or specific ideas. The more I learn about myself and the world around me, the more I can put that life back into my work. Sometimes there is such a strong stigma in the art world about not being able to experiment with approaches and mediums. I just want to try everything out. Creativity shouldn't be limited if that's not what you want.

You seem to make a lot of movies, as well as using photo and other media. How do these mediums compare to painting for you as a creative outlet?

Painting constantly for hours on end can be really rewarding but also a bit isolating, so working with video and photo reconnects me with all the great stuff that is outside myself. And since the learning process with video is still new I'm really getting into all the different challenges.

Can you tell me about collaborating with the band Sea Wolf? How did that come about and what do you think of working with bands and labels?

Doing art direction for bands and working with labels is a lot of fun and the work I did for Sea Wolf was great. I've worked with the director, Josh Forbes, on a couple of projects and he's a seriously sweet and funny guy. I was excited to hear that the video is playing on MTV2 now. It's kind of surreal when things like that happen.

As you are currently enrolled in the MFA program at CCA, I guess it's only fair to ask your opinion of CCA and art school in general. Do you feel that it's helped you out in the long run?

I am a huge proponent of school and CCA's MFA program is really strong right now. Every student and teacher I've met there has been incredible and supportive. The grad studios have a really strong sense of community too. It's inspiring to be around so many people creating and learning side by side. I think that is the biggest thing I've gotten out of being there.

What kind of music do you listen to while you're working (if any)?

Some of my favorites are the new Blonde Redhead album, Carol King, Edith Piaf, Fujiya & Miyagi, The Lapse, Shocking Blue, The Young People, Fleetwood Mac, The Sads, and My Barbarian... I listen to music non-stop while I'm working. Sometimes I can really kill an album in the course of a few days because listen to a good album over and over. It's a terrible habit but I can't help myself.

Do you think music plays an important part in the creation of art (yours or in general)?

Absolutely. Music feels so important to this age and I find it influencing me consciously and subconsciously all the time. The impressions some songs have on me can definitely sneak into my work.

I'm always intrigued by artist's work schedules. Are you one of those artists that can only work after dark and keeps night hours or can you work whenever?

I can't paint at night at all; I am more of an early riser. I like to work with my coffee and natural light. Once past 8pm my eyes are usually done for the day and need to go out and have the night off.

I have seen your work range from small and concise to large and sprawling. Do you prefer working either larger or smaller?

Large and sprawling forever & ever.

Anyone or anything you are really excited about right now?

I'm really excited about summer and life in general. This coming fall I'm thinking of hosting a hug, color coordinated human domino made out of trust falls in Dolores Park...I'm looking forward to organizing that. I also have a solo show at Motel Gallery coming up in October, which should be a blast. I love Portland.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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